On the third morning, he found Theron's presence in the city.
Not the man himself — he understood that Theron was not in Carenfall, that the Lord Chancellor operated from the capital three days east and had his operational presence in this city through intermediaries and network rather than direct occupation. He found Theron's presence the way he found everything: through what the stone held.
He had been walking the lower quarter for three days by then, learning the city in the way that he learned spaces — not by map or guide but by direct reading, by the accumulated impression of his hand trailing against walls and his feet on cobblestones and his attention on the specific quality of buildings that had been used by specific people for specific purposes.
On the third morning he found a building that held a different quality.
Not on the lower quarter's main routes — on a secondary street, three blocks from the Silt and Stone, a building that looked from the outside like any of the other commercial buildings in the neighbourhood. Older than most. Well-maintained in the specific way of something that was funded rather than merely kept up, the difference between a building maintained by its occupants who had limited resources and a building maintained by someone who could pay for the appearance of ordinary.
He did not touch the exterior.
He walked past it and noted it and went around the block and came back from the other direction and noted it again.
He went back to the Silt and Stone.
"Three blocks north," he said to Borin. "The building with the grey lintel and the new shutters."
Borin went still.
"That building," Corvin said, "has had people in it recently who were not from this neighbourhood. The impression in the stone on the corner nearest to it — foot traffic, the quality of specific people passing through this area on a regular basis — those people were not from here. Their resonance quality was different. City quality, not lower quarter quality. People who came from somewhere that had more resources and more authority and who came regularly and with purpose."
Borin looked at him carefully.
"That building," Borin said slowly, "was sold eight years ago to a property holding company. I tried to find the company's ownership at the time because the purchase seemed — out of character for the neighbourhood. The trail went through three intermediaries before I stopped." He paused. "I stopped because continuing seemed more dangerous than useful at the time."
"It's a surveillance point," Corvin said. "Or a coordination point. Or both." He paused. "Someone in that building has been watching this neighbourhood with specific intent for some time. The impression in the corner stone goes back at least five years from the depth of it."
"Five years," Borin said quietly.
"They've been watching you."
Borin absorbed this without visible reaction. The specific quality of someone receiving information they had prepared themselves to receive — not surprised, not unsurprised, simply integrating.
"For five years," he said, "nothing has moved against me. The watching has not produced action."
"The watching was probably not for you specifically," Corvin said. "Or not only for you. The whole neighbourhood. Any unusual arrival. Any contact between you and someone who might match a specific description." He paused. "I arrived three days ago. I have been in this neighbourhood for three days."
Borin looked at the wall for a moment.
"How long before that building produces action?" he said.
"I don't know. I don't know what their reporting schedule is or how quickly it reaches wherever it's going." Corvin thought. "But I think we don't have the time I thought we had."
Borin nodded.
"Vera," he said.
"Yes," Corvin said. "Sooner than we planned."
They spent the rest of the day preparing.
Borin was efficient about it — seventeen years of maintaining this position while managing the specific risk of being exactly who he was had produced a man who understood how to prepare for rapid departure without the preparation being visible as preparation. The things that needed to be gathered were gathered in the ordinary movements of running a tavern. The things that needed to be sent ahead were sent in the ordinary movements of a tavern's supplier relationships.
Corvin went down to the basement once more.
He had two hours before the evening made departure more practical than the day. He spent them in the room's specific quality, extending and receiving, extending and receiving, learning the shape of his own output with the precision that the room's reflective stone made possible.
On the third extension he felt something different.
Not in the room's stone. In the locket.
The locket had been warm in the directional south-pointing way since the ledge. Now it was doing something additional — not warmer, not differently directed, but present in a way that had a quality of attention that the warmth alone did not have. As if something that had been ambient had become slightly more focused.
He maintained the projection and held the attention simultaneously.
What arrived was not the language below language. Not the direct communication of the ledge. Something subtler — a quality in the fragment's warmth that was responsive rather than initiating. As if the projection's specific frequency was something the fragment recognized as belonging to a correct category, was noting as correct, was registering in the same way that the monastery's stones had registered things that had been true for a long time.
He was doing the right thing.
Not guidance. Not instruction. The specific quality of a system whose correct elements were functioning as they were meant to function, registering their correct function the way a well-made mechanism registered its own operation.
He filed this.
He went back upstairs.
He told Borin he was ready.